Paint By Numbers
by Sorrel
Summary: After six years of nothing, Lex Luthor walks back into Clark's life. The real question isn't why he's back- it's why he left in the first place. Lex/girl!Clark, AU.


**Don't Ask Me.**

**~*~**

Lex Luthor walked back into her life at 3:14 pm on a Thursday.

Clark's afternoon class was in its last moments, her students gathering up their books and bags and coats as she had to raise her voice to get out her last-minute instructions heard. "-and don't forget to finish the chapter on quadratic equations! You have to do the problem sets, and I do mean _all_ of them, and if I think you're slacking off I'm collecting 'em, so do your work!"

"Strict," commented a male voice lightly from off to her right. "But then, you always did like to make sure everybody did the right thing."

Clark swore that her heart skipped a beat even though Kryptonians didn't _have_ heart attacks. Oh, god, it was him. "Lex. Still sneaking up on people just to get the advantage."

The rueful twist of his lips acknowledged her point, and her heart beat faster still. It was the same smile he'd given her every time she'd scored a point or won an argument and surprised him all over again with her intelligence. "It works very well, normally." His hands went into his pockets, all neutral body language and empty smile. He was hiding something, what was he hiding, why was he here? "How're you doing, Eleanor?"

Just like that, all the joyful hope that had started fluttering around in her chest popped and deflated like a leftover birthday balloon. "It's just Clark," she said, and turned away, as much to hide the disappointment she couldn't quite keep off her face as to shove her papers into her bag. "It's always been just Clark."

The space behind her where he was standing radiated surprise. "You used to like being called Eleanor."

She zipped up her bag, made sure her expression was under control, took a deep breath, and turned around.

"No, Lex," she said. "I used to like _you_ calling me Eleanor."

Then she brushed past him and was out the door without looking back.

**~*~**

"-just like that, out of nowhere, he shows up again!" Clark waved her drink expansively, forcing Lois to duck unless he wanted to get splashed. "Like nothing's changed! Like it hasn't been six fucking years, no letters, no phone calls, no nothing!"

Lois firmly removed her drink from her hand and set it down safely at the other end of the table. "It's not like you didn't know Luthor is an asshole. The whole world knows Luthor is an asshole; that's how he does business. This is not news."

"He didn't _used_ to be an asshole," Clark protested, knowing even as he said it that it sounded weak. "We used to be friends."

"And then he disappeared back to Metropolis and never talked to you again," pointed out Lois, who didn't believe in pulling punches. "In other words: asshole."

Clark sighed and subsided into her corner of the booth. "He called me Eleanor."

"Oh, Clark." Lois bit her lip on what was probably hysterical laughter. "Even the _Dean_ knows better than that. Chloe told me that story about when you beat up the quarterback in ninth grade for the _audacity_ of calling you by your first name."

"It's a stupid name!" Clark said, throwing up her hands. "Why dad took 'Kala Jor-El" and got _Eleanor_ I still don't know! I'm an alien and I'm not that weird!"

"Stop declaring that you're an alien in the middle of the bar," Lois said with rolled eyes, the same way Clark's mom always said, "Stop drinking milk out of the carton," or Chloe said, "Stop using our roof as a launch pad." Clark was intimately familiar with that long-suffering tone.

Except for Lex. Lex had never looked at her like that. Lex had looked at her oddities wholesale and found them as fascinating as he did… Greek philosophy, or obscure Latin texts. Like something to be discovered, not managed.

"Why do I talk to you, anyway?" Clark sulked.

"Because I'm the only person who can keep up with your absurd alcohol intake and not laugh at your hilarious drama."

"You laugh all the time!"

"But only with love," Lois assured her. "Now pay for the damn drinks, it's your turn, and take your emo home to your diary. I've got an exam tomorrow."

"You're going to be a horrible doctor," Clark said mournfully, and flagged down the waitress.

**~*~**

Chloe was gone when she got home, as she usually was these days. Either she was out with Jimmy or out hunting down a story or _both,_ and Clark had gotten used to the feeling of an empty apartment. She saw Chloe when her roommate came home to shower and change, or when Chloe brought her coffee during office hours, but that was it.

It was fine by Clark. She liked having time to herself. Other people, it was just talk, talk, talk, about _everything,_ and it solved nothing. People could talk themselves to death and never _do_ anything.

But math. Math had a solution. Math had a right and wrong answer. She'd never drive math away because she wasn't enough for it.

When Clark was upset, she turned to math.

Her office was this beautiful empty space, all white walls and ceilings, and six different white boards positioned around the room, a gift from Chloe when Clark first got her degree. The only furniture was a couch under the window that Clark crashed on when she worked too late and a small desk in the corner heaped with papers to grade. The rest of the floor was left open for pacing, just the way she liked it.

Tonight she crossed the floor a hundred times, marker in hand, and accomplished nothing. _Six years._ Lionel Luthor had been blinded in the tornado and Lex had gone with him, back to Metropolis- but Clark had understood that, of course she had. This was Lex's chance to prove herself, to get a foothold in the company, more than just running the factory. She'd been happy for him.

But he'd drifted away. He'd stopped taking her calls, and then he stopped returning her emails. After a couple months, she realized that he wasn't just "busy." He'd shaken the dust of Smallville off his feet, and she'd just been collateral damage, nothing more, nothing less, nothing _personal._

That was the day she'd gone to her guidance counselor, and tested out of every math class Smallville High offered.

The front door slammed, and a minute later Chloe stuck her head in through the open office door. "_Lex_ stopped by your classroom today?"

Lois had spilled; Lois always did. Worst gossip in the city, bar none. "It wasn't like there was much conversation involved."

Chloe cocked her head, birdlike. "Was there heavy breathing?"

Clark blinked at her for a moment, then threw up her hands in disgust. "What? No. No! Why would you say that?"

Chloe came the rest of the way into the office, shedding her bag and scarf. "You did have that giant crush on him."

"I was fifteen! Everyone has a crush on an older guy when they're fifteen."

"Yeah, and it didn't hurt that he was rich, gorgeous, and looked at you like you were dinner."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Clark turned away and fiddled with the cap on her marker. "It wasn't like that."

"Mm-hmm." Chloe leaned against the doorframe. "Did you at least give him a chance to say why he was there?"

She hadn't wanted to hear it. "I already know. Dr. Rader put my name on the proposal she sent to Luthercorp, even though I told her to leave me off."

"You consulted on that project. You were in here for three months straight consulting on it."

"Unofficially."

"Guess Rader thought that you deserved official credit," Chloe said. "You can't blame her for that."

"I can when it brings Lex freaking Luthor to my door."

Chloe sighed. "Do you really think he didn't know where you were? This is Metropolis. This is _his city,_ which is un-PC as hell but pretty much true. He knows everything that happens here."

Clark gave up on her marker and risked a glance at Chloe's face. Her oldest and best friend gave her a smile, full of the same patient exasperation that Chloe always had for her. She'd always been wise to the ways and means of people and social interaction, with Clark stumbling hopelessly behind in her wake, trying desperately to figure out the trick. Chloe had always been there, tapping her toe and waiting with that same damn smile for Clark to catch up. Most of the time, Clark was even grateful.

"Then why did he come see me _today?_ After all this time?"

"You'll have to ask him, won't you?"

**~*~**

Three am and Clark was just finishing her patrol. Normally she'd be home in bed like a sane person by now, but the criminal element was unusually active tonight and Clark was more than happy to change that.

"Look who it is, folks! It's the Superrrrr Girl!"

Clark looked up to see a green shadow crouched on an awning three feet above her head. "Does Lois know you're back in town, or is this one of those fly-bys I'm not supposed to tell her about?"

Ollie vaulted neatly down to the pavement next to her. "Heard you've been hanging out with other billionaires. I think I'm jealous."

"Yeah, you've seen Lois." Clark yanked back the stupid black hood that Chloe made her wear and scrubbed one hand over her hair, darkened with sweat. She missed having short hair. "Am I about to get another lecture on my social skills? Because really, coming from you that would be hilarious."

"Hell, no, that guy's poison. You're better off staying clear."

Clark rolled her eyes. "And your opinion is in no way biased by the fact that he just bought out another one of your holdings last month."

Ollie's face said that he was going to have words with Chloe and her research abilities, but all he said out loud was, "All's fair in business, no one knows that better than me."

_Because you, too, are an asshole,_ Clark translated silently. "Or the fact that you went to high school with him and bullied him mercilessly."

Silence from underneath that green hood. "You _know_ about that?"

She smiled humorlessly. "Guess Lois left that part out. We were close, once. He told me a lot."

Ollie very obviously did the math. "You were _fifteen._ Jesus, what kind of asshole gets _close_ to a fifteen-year-old girl?"

"The kind that sees a teenager in exactly the same situation as he was in, back in the day." Ollie shot her a surprised look. "That's right, Queen. I was the school freak. The only reason I didn't get bullied was because I got a reputation for finishing fights that other people started. Lex got that."

Ollie tapped his fingers restlessly against his belt. "No wonder you hate me so much," he said finally.

She laughed, almost with genuine humor. "Oh, don't flatter yourself. I don't hate you. I just think you're a rich asshole playing at being a hero and a perfect boyfriend, and I wish you'd do it away from my city and Lois."

"Don't hold back, tell me what you really think," Ollie snarked back, but his voice was shaky.

"I always do," Clark told him, and left before he could think up another clever comeback. Conversations with Ollie always depressed her, when they didn't leave her wanting to bash his head against the brick. Give her Bart any day. At least Bart had suffered for where he was. How the hell can you save desperate people every day when you've never been desperate for anything? How could weigh the cost of your decisions when you'd never had to pay that price?

Lex had always understood the cost of things. Clark had realized what being a hero meant when she had to watch him walk into a hostage situation and take off his vest, because the man with the gun was a Luthorcorp victim. Risk. Responsibility. Identity. Those were the lessons she'd learned from Lex.

Too bad he hadn't stuck around to watch her put those into practice. Too bad she hadn't been able to give him enough in return to make him want to stay.

**~*~**

Clark both loved and hated doing office hours. Loved it, because she did genuinely enjoy teaching, and when students showed up it was usually because they had genuine problems, and nothing felt better than the look on a student's face when the math just _clicked_ for them. It was the same kind of rush she got when she saved somebody's life.

But when no students came by, she hated it. Because she got bored _out of her mind._

That's why she and Chloe had a deal. Chloe swung by at the tail end of her lunch break, armed with coffee and her brimming-over energy. In return, Clark let her babble out all the details of whatever she was working on at the time, and gave her an outsider's point of view so she could fine-tune before she presented to the editor. Clark had roomed with Chloe for all four years of her journalism degree; she could do that in her _sleep._

Chloe had texted to warn her that she was running a little late, though, so when Clark heard someone knocking shave-and-a-haircut on her doorframe, she assumed it was a student and didn't bother to look up from the test she was grading. "Just give me a second to finish this and I'll be right with you."

"That's fine, I can wait."

Damn it. Clark jerked her head up and glared at Lex, who had now successfully surprised her halfway into a heart attack _two days in a row._ "What are you doing here?"

Lex's face showed nothing but polite, open neutrality. This time she knew better to think that it was the "I'm pretending I'm not about to do the upper-class equivalent of pissing myself laughing" face that she'd used to delight in getting out of him. This was his business face- because that's what she was. Business.

She had never hated her life more.

"Dr. Rader was obliging enough to direct me to your office."

Fuck Chloe anyway, for getting her hopes up. Again. "I told her not put my name on that proposal. I didn't want your favoritism."

"And when have you known me to play favorites?"

"Right." Clark _hated_ the fact that she could pretty much feel her expression shutting down. "Naturally."

If she didn't know better, she'd think that Lex's expression was regretful. "That's not how I meant-"

"Of course not." She cut her hand through the air in front of her, as if she could cut away his words. "I suppose that's not the point. If it's not about the proposal, then why are you here?" Chloe _had_ told her to ask Lex directly, and Clark was tired of being confused, of dealing with _people_ instead of math, of not knowing where she stood. She needed answers.

Lex opened his mouth, shut it again, and then sighed, scrubbing one hand over the top of his head. It was a nervous gesture, it was one of Lex's most _obvious_ nervous gestures, she'd only ever seen him do it after near-death experiences and at his father's funeral. "Look, I'm going about this all wrong. Can I come in?"

More confused than ever, Clark waved at the chairs in front of her desk. "Uh, sure. Take your pick."

Lex came in and closed the door behind him- she raised her eyebrows- and then chose to stay standing, his hands shoved so deep into his pockets that they strained the seams. "Dr. Rader didn't put your name on the proposal. I didn't even know you were teaching here. The R&D department forwarded her paperwork on to me, said they thought I'd want to take a look. And when I did… That math was some of the best I've ever seen in my life. I had to find the mind behind it. Imagine my surprise when Dr. Rader yielded _your_ name."

Clark looked down at her desk, her vision clicking on till she could see her hands, turning into white-knuckled, bloodless fists in her lap. She was squeezing so hard she could probably crush coal into diamonds right now. "Sorry to disappoint."

"Disappoint?" Lex laughed, disbelievingly. "You really don't-" He stopped, frustrated. She blinked at him. He'd never looked more than mildly perturbed when his stock was threatening to crash, but from the expression on his face right now, if he had hair he'd be tearing it out. "What you said yesterday. You know I… Do you even know why I moved back to Metropolis?"

"Because your father needed you," Clark replied, automatically. She'd replayed his goodbye speech over and over in her head so many times she knew it by heart. Stupid alien memory.

"My father could probably have diced with the Devil himself and come out a winner. He didn't need me."

Lex always had liked turning her world upside down. "Then why did you leave?"

"Elean- Clark," Lex corrected himself, before she could do more than start to glare at him. "You were _fifteen._"

People had been saying that a lot lately. Her, Chloe, Oliver… But for the first time, Clark really thought about what that meant. She'd been fifteen years old that year. He'd been twenty-one.

She'd been fifteen.

All the times she'd thought, _this is the worst moment of my life,_ none of them compared to this one. "I was… really unbearably obvious, wasn't I," she said, and bit her lip. She'd gone through plenty of humiliating situations in her life, and she'd always figured out how to laugh at them eventually. Somehow, she didn't think she was going to be laughing any time soon. "God. I'm… so sorry. Really."

"Christ, it's like talking to a wall," Lex said wonderingly. She scowled at him.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that _you_ have nothing to be sorry for. You knew how to keep a secret. I was the one who was obvious."

She opened her mouth to make some automatic, scathing reply, then stopped, closing it again as what he said sunk in. "You mean you-"

"I realized that if I didn't move out of time I was going to get myself arrested for statutory rape," Lex admitted, and then finally collapsed down into the chair, pale with confession. "I can't believe I actually said that out loud. You're telling me that you never knew that?"

Clark was still on autopilot, her brain in overdrive as the most important part of her history was being rewritten. "Lex, you do remember how you used to have to explain basic social behavior to me, right? Of _course_ I didn't know."

"Of course not. Christ." Lex scrubbed his hands over his face. She'd never seen him this out of sorts, _never._ "Well, I was- I did. The whole thing was so stupid, even for me. I _knew_ better, and yet…"

"You said it felt like destiny," Clark said softly, remembering. Their second meeting. She'd thrown the truck keys at his head. He'd held an ice pack to his jaw and told her that he was impressed by her aim.

"It felt like I was going crazy."

"I know what you mean." How many times had she sat next to him, in the car or on the couch or in some movie theatre or opera house or at her parents kitchen table, and she'd thought her heart might just _burst_ from his nearness? He'd been the most amazing person she'd ever met, the only other one to wear his utter _differentness_ on his skin like a badge of honor. "That's why you dropped off the face of the earth."

"Trust me, Tokyo is actually a part of this planet, no matter how much it feels different sometimes." Lex gave her a wry, strained smile. "I didn't really… think about you. I know it's probably not what you want to hear, but I just couldn't…"

"No, it's okay." She understood, actually. Lex wasn't the kind of guy to think about what he couldn't have. "Must have been a kick to the balls to hear my name, then."

"And then some. I always knew you were smart, a lot smarter than you let on. But you always acted liked you hated class."

"I did. But I realized that if people are going to treat you like a freak, you might as well give them a reason. People are happier if they can point at something and go, 'Oh, _that's_ why.'" She shrugged. "And I love math."

"Believe me, it shows." Lex was silent for a long moment. "I actually didn't really have a plan when coming to see you yesterday."

"Lex Luthor, without a plan? I can't believe it." She smiled at him, and he smiled back, ruefully.

"It's not unheard of. When I found out you were here, that you were _teaching,_ writing papers, all this and not much older than I was then… I realized that you'd grown up. I guess I just wanted to see the person that you'd grown into."

"And now here we are."

He met her gaze straight-on. "Yes. Here we are."

She knew what he was saying. Contrary to general evidence, she wasn't quite as oblivious as all that. He was making an offer, in his twisty Lex-way. Just like her, he wanted to know where they stood.

But she remembered the way he'd called her Eleanor, and no matter what Chloe liked to joke, she'd changed a _lot_ in the last six years. Lex meant well, but the girl in his head, the one he'd just made his offer to, didn't really exist anymore. And now matter how much she wanted to say, "Yes!" she realized that, for once in her life, she needed to let common sense prevail.

So she smiled at him, a little cautiously and with a lot of hope, and said, "Maybe we can talk about it over dinner tonight."

His face went blank and still for a moment, and right then she was terrified, that she'd said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, driven him away _again_- but when his expression came back, all she could see on his face was happiness, touched with a caution that looked a lot like hers.

"I'd like that," he said.

It wasn't happily-ever-after. It wasn't even maybe-ever-anything. But it was a good start.


End file.
